


And Here's No Great Matter

by sunofsevenless



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Angst and Humor, Bureaucracy, Friendship, Gen, Misunderstandings, dealing with change, existential unease, heinous work ethics, no beta we die like men, petty angst, poor communication kills, this Gabriel is sooo not Jon Hamm, violent behavior
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-03-20 05:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18986557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunofsevenless/pseuds/sunofsevenless
Summary: Crowley accidentally Saunters Vaguely Upwards. No one is overly pleased.





	1. The Fool

Sunday had been like an embarrassingly sappy checklist of everything that thankfully still existed. They'd been to St James'. The Ritz. And then they'd gotten into the Bentley and gone to get drunk at the bookshop that was also still there. It was celebration of all the things unchanged. By the time it got dark they were finishing their third bottle. In fact, by the time it got dark they'd been finishing that third bottle for two hours. Not that they suddenly decided to exercise temperance. They'd been absentmindedly wishing it to stay half full. It was a good one.

After the great commotion of Saturday, Aziraphale thought, it was only fair that they got a calm and peaceful Sunday. It was pleasant. They'd earned some rest, he decided. Which was apparently a very sinful thought seeing how the universe didn't even wait two full minutes to thwart it. 

Crowley took off his sunglasses in a single exhausted motion and looked at the angel, who instantly jumped up an inch or two. 

"Err" said Aziraphale, puzzled. And then, "wherever do you find the energy, dear?"

"Wha?" Crowley said. 

A parade of finest eloquence, that conversation was.

"Well, didn't you say it was exhausting, keeping them human?" 

He had. He had said "Why d'you think Down Below keeps handing out corporations with a primitive emanation matrix where eyes should be? Well, I'll tell you why" (he'd been notoriously drunk that evening, so drunk in fact that it went past the stage where you cannot pronounce complicated words and straight into the territory where "primitive emanation matrix" seems like a perfectly fine conversation material) "it's cause they're a nuisance, the eyes. Like making a second corporation, that much energy. I mean... I mean... You ever seen the body after I've been discorporated?" Aziraphale had. It was one of the reasons he wasn't so keen on sleeping. 

"Whom?" Crowley asked, thoroughly bewildered by now.

"Your eyes" Aziraphale provided helpfully. He managed to miss the foreboding turn the conversation was taking. Considering the state of drunken post-nonpocalyptic bliss Aziraphale was in, he would probably overlook a big hairy sense of doom filling the entire room.

"Wha?" Crowley repeated, a shade more alert now. He found his glasses on the dusty table and tried to use them as a mirror. And then he stared in them. His face was blank.

"Angel" he said, blinking twice (which was usually his annual quota for blinking). He sounded sober now, and rather distressed. "I'm not doing that". A beat. "My corporation is not doing that". 

Aziraphale watched amber irises, both edges perfectly round, grow thin and flicker upwards briefly. Crowley stood up, slowly, deliberately. His hands were shaking as he put his shades back on the littered table. 

Wine spilled from the glasses as they came tumbling to the floor. Broken glass rained everywhere. A few books came flying from neat stacks Aziraphale had assembled earlier, intending to do inventory. Clouds of dust rose gently into the air and settled back down with dark finality. 

Somewhere between the pitiful dying crack of a few unsuspecting seams and the rustle of feathers Aziraphale sobered up and sat up very straight. He now had a ridiculous itchy feeling, like he was looking at a page from a colouring book abandoned halfway through. It was highly inappropriate, but potent. The room was filled with warm orange light, and wood, and all the other things full of warmth and colour. And white feathers. The room was small, and angel wings big, so feathers filled half of it. Angel wings. Oh. 

Now that Aziraphale was sober in more than one way he could finally put his finger on what he hadn't noticed earlier. In the six thousand years they'd known each other he'd come to sense Crowley's presence as, well, Crowley's presence. He tended to stop at this extremely accurate definition. And now he really looked into what he was sensing around himself... or rather, into what he wasn't sensing. Which was demonic presence. 

His heart did a flip. It was a good flip, graceful and probably worthy of a decent acrobat. There was something warm and joyful building up in his chest until he saw Crowley's face and the construction got suspended till further notice. It was straight out of that same abandoned coloring book, white as his feathers, amber eyes staring dejectedly at his white wings cooped up like a wigwam against low ceiling. 

Aziraphale cleared his throat tactfully. "I take it congratulations are not in order?" his voice was mild, and words chosen carefully. 

"Yeah, you think?!" Crowley snapped. 

His eyes darted helplessly to the table. The table had nothing to offer but pitiful puddles of spilled wine, so Crowley reached inside the cupboard, took another bottle of wine and glared at the cork menacingly until it grew a pair of arms, with great effort unscrewed itself from its glass confinement and landing gracefully on that same pair of arms strode indignantly in the direction of the entrance. Crowley tipped the bottle into his mouth and drank. There was a soft sound as the front door opened and then clicked shut. 

"Wasn't that a little too much, my dear?" Aziraphale ventured, more puzzled than disapproving, and nodded uncertainly to the door.  Somewhere out there a certain bottle cork, royally pissed off and very much alive, was making its way across the street.

No answer. Crowley was still drinking like it was right now the sole purpose of his existence. Seconds ticked away. Spilled wine was soaking into the carpet guiltily. 

"It was." Crowley agreed mildly, when he finished (oh dear, he did, didn't he, he finished the whole bottle). "Sorry." he added quietly as he sat back, that white feathery wigwam of his spreading flat against the walls. With a snap of his fingers the sunglasses were back on his face. 

Aziraphale, all in all, did not feel particularly distressed. He knew with a feverish, righteous certainty the occasion was happy, a great miracle, if a little unexpected. His rational mind, on the other hand, was busy working itself into a frenzy. It was handy, being able to distance himself from complicated moral dilemmas and logical paradoxes processed in his mind. Crowley didn't have that ability and the angel remembered what it usually did to him. 

Aziraphale's gaze was stuck on Crowley's wings, unmoving. They looked unfamiliar. Alien. They had been velvety black yesterday, spread out alongside the angel's white feathers in a perfect image of equilibrium. Say, where's that equilibrium now? He still had to fight that ridiculous urge to lay his hands on a piece of charcoal and paint them black, the way they should be. 

And yet they were still Crowley's wings, obviously. The same as yesterday and the same as countless times before that. There was one particular primary sticking out at an odd angle, Aziraphale's doing. The guilt had never really worn off. 

 

They'd been fighting, sometime ante Christum natum (the angel couldn't bring himself to remember when or where, but it was hot and full of sand). They fought mindlessly, pointlessly and without much passion. Without any passion by that point, probably. They fought because they were supposed to, end of story. Their faces were inches apart, wings out for balance, when Aziraphale's blade slipped and buried itself in Crowley's left wing. The angel watched in horrified fascination as it sliced through supernatural flesh effortlessly, stray feathers covering the wound swiftly like they'd just invented zipper, and the blade came down releasing a streak of blood. The sand turned red beneath them. 

Crowley hissed in pain, coiling in on himself, wings fluttering madly. 

"You mad, angel?" he choked out, barely catching his breath. His eyes were screwed shut, a stack of soft wrinkles and long, ridiculously straight lashes. He staggered erratically forward, not backwards for some reason and landed a hand on the angel's shoulder, a tight, urgent grip. "That was my wing, you bastard. They don't just grow back, you know". 

He had Aziraphale then and there. The angel stared at him, motionless, the blade limp in his hand, as Crowley leaned heavily on him, and he thought, _what?_   The demon was right there, not making so much as a single move to put some distance between them, wasn't looking at the weapon still dripping blood into the sand, he wasn't even... He wasn't looking anywhere, really, just standing there, eyes still shut and face white as Heaven's catalogue of interior design ideas. That was some blind trust if he'd ever seen any. Not in a friend (because they hadn't been friends yet, not really), not in an enemy either (because you trust your enemy to go discorporate you, in a business-like manner, not cease violence the moment you ask nicely). It was a different kind of trust altogether. Crowley trusted someone who had lived on Earth long enough to know the price of things that will never be the same again. Long enough to loathe irrevocable changes. To secretly, stupidly, fear death of every living thing with mindless devotion. 

And oh dear, was it _blind_. It wasn't just wrong for a demon. It was wrong. _Period_. It was healthy in a way that it topped and toppled the usual scale of mental health, overflowed it and came out on the other side. They never fought like that again. Never. Every time Aziraphale as much as considered it, even centuries later, he could almost feel Crowley's fingers on his arms, steaky with cold sweat, gripping hard but slipping ever so slightly. 

While the angel was gaping, Crowley staggered sideways and sat exhaustedly on the ground cross-legged. He looked very small in the midst of the vast desert. The demon touched his wing gingerly, then his shaking hand tried for a complicated gesture and failed, judging by his frustrated expression. He tried again, and again, his face growing desperate. 

"Crowley" Aziraphale called out softly. "It won't help." 

His voice was heavy with the weight of guilt in his throat. And possibly some stray sand. 

"It will." the demon protested. "A little."

Maybe he was right. Earthly dimension was something akin to a dream for them. If you knew how to do it, you could change it, rearrange it to your liking when you felt like it. Their wings were not earthly. They simply appeared here, dragged out by the physicality of the corporation, but they were not of this world. A part of their own dimensions, they weren’t the same, not malleable, clay-like substance like physical world. They were not completely unyielding either, but working on them required an entirely different level of skill and concentration. Concentration that Crowley, being waist deep in fear and pain, simply could not manage. 

Aziraphale strolled over to where the demon sat and gently dropped to his knees beside him, all soft footsteps and smooth motions. 

"I could try." he said quietly. 

"I thought you'd never assssk." 

And the injured wing slammed into his face like a bloodthirsty tree branch. 

It was a thing of beauty, that wing. Aziraphale had never seen a colour quite like it anywhere on Earth or in Heaven. Jet-black that broke into a thousand colours under unforgiving sun of the desert. It was smooth and soft, and looked like something you wouldn't mind drowning in, if only it were liquid. 

The angel gathered his thoughts, all his strength and a stray prayer, and did _a thing_. The vast horizon of sands swam before his eyes, he felt drained. The feathers didn't quite straighten themselves and the wound under them looked like it'd been sewn shut by a blind surgeon suffering from tremours but the bleeding had stopped and he could tell the pain subsided. 

"Thanksss, angel" he heard distantly even as the spinning landscape gained quite an alarming speed and he felt cold hands hold his shoulders. 

 

Aziraphale shook his head in what he knew to be some built-in mechanism for human brains to return from the land of memories to the land of, well, everything else. His backroom still mostly had snow-white feathers for wallpapers and Crowley looked suspiciously like a depressing Christmas decoration. His nose was deep inside his wineglass. 

Aziraphale had seen in his existence quite a lot of white wings. It was only natural. The entirety of Heaven looked like a butchered pillow on busy days. And just as naturally, he hadn't seen nearly enough suncast rainbows on velvet black. And those wings, that one particularly amazing detail of the overall beauty of The Holy One's creation, Blessed be He, had been erased. Forever. 

 _Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?_ Right, there was that. You lost things. Eyes. Wings. And even this sounded ridiculous. Crowley hadn't lost them, they were just different. Small price to pay by all means. He'd been Redeemed. Saved. He... Rose, or something like that. Reintegrated, if you chose to follow that French fellow's insistent terminology. 

And yet. And yet... Aziraphale's mind got stuck on one single thought. _The colour. Even the very colour is no more._

"Like a dead parrot." Crowley said all of a sudden. 

Or... not all of a sudden maybe. 

"Say, was I thinking out loud?" 

"Yep." 

"Oh." Aziraphale said thoughtfully. "And what was that about the parrot."

"It ceased to be." Crowley said very seriously, something brittle creeping into his voice. 

"It did?" 

"Yes. That parrot, angel, it isss no more." Then Crowley froze. "You know what?" he whispered. "You don't, do you? Well the thing is. Thing is. _It is an ex-parrot!_ " 

And he dissolved into a fit of hysterical giggles. 

"Are you alright, my dear?" Aziraphale asked sympathetically. 

"More or less." 

Aziraphale kept looking at him, question in his eyes.

Crowley sighed. "I'm fine, angel, honest. It's like I've always said, they're just sides. Stamps on the paperwork, is all."

Yes, he _had_ always said that. And Aziraphale had never believed him. He'd always thought that somewhere deep down Crowley had still missed Heaven. Maybe he had. Maybe that was just something they'd caught from people, like a cold, or an odd habit, or free will - to reflexively miss things you couldn't have, things you've lost. He would probably miss Hell from now on. The thought was rather perverse. Knowing Crowley, it had a good chance of turning out to be true. 

They drank in puzzled silence for another hour or so until Crowley stood up, swaying slightly, made up a thoroughly ridiculous excuse and left. His wings trailed after him depressingly for a few steps and then dissolved into another dimension. Aziraphale sighed. That was rather childish, wasn't it? Happy or not, they'd have to deal with it someday. 

Which was exactly the problem, Crowley thought. He didn't want yet another thing that needed dealing with. He'd had enough of those recently, he was practically sick of them, and he never asked for more, would those bloody celestial bureaucrats just listen to him, just this once, he hadn't ask for this. He didn't feel any different. Alright, maybe a little different, now that he knew what he was looking for. Like great scales pinned to his very existence had been set in motion and had fluttered anxiously until they missed the point of balance and tipped to the other side. All of it just seemed _unnecessary_. 

 

 


	2. The Hermit

On Monday Crowley woke up with a mighty hangover, an unpleasant grimace and a groan. It hadn't been what you'd call a nightmare. After all, people had different words for nightmares and bad dreams for a reason. Nightmares left you screaming and shaking, but they disappeared as soon as sun came out, probably killed by sunlight on molecular level, like a sneaky virus or a wicked witch. But bad dreams had a way of _lingering_. They were too polite to have claws but their unremarkable fingernails buried themselves deep in your very mind and they didn't let go. Where nightmares dropped you into a vast ocean of irrational emotion, bad dreams had a stinky puddle for you. You stood ankles deep in it, and it smelled, and there was nowhere to go but that very same stinky puddle. It was big and your shoes got stuck in it. The only kind more despicable than bad dreams were mildly unpleasant ones. Crowley tried to shake off the remains of one particularly annoying specimen. He'd been falling upwards, in his dream, directions all mingled and white wings that he stubbornly didn't want to recognize as his own hanging limply from his back. It hadn't been especially frightening, or painful. Truth be told, it hadn't been especially anything. Slightly uncomfortable, somewhat disorienting and just plain boring, in a hopelessly mundane sort of way. He thought he could still see blue-grey uneventfulness of the sky passing down sedately on the edge of his vision. Stuck in a puddle, just like that. 

Crowley swore as he stumbled on an empty bottle of vodka. He never cared for that particular drink much. It reminded him of Heaven in that it had no taste and he wondered sometimes if it only existed because most people had no means of stealing rubbing alcohol from hospitals. Vodka, in Russian, was just a letter away from water and last night Crowley had thoroughly honored that curious fact by drinking it _exactly_ like it was water. On a hot day. In desert. 

He made his way into the bathroom and washed his face with ice cold water until the tip of his nose felt colder than deep space, brushed his teeth with minty toothpaste until his mouth felt colder than his nose and then made a big, big mistake of looking at himself in the mirror. The eyes that were staring at him from the mirror... Well, there was nothing wrong with them of course. They just weren't _his_ eyes. It was like he opened a door into yesterday and all the fear and impotent rage came rushing back in, not bothering to wipe their feet or as much as say hello, and joined his godawful hangover, ready to have party of a century together. 

Crowley swore profusely, splattering the offending amalgam with greenish foam, took a deep breath and snapped his fingers sending the mirror as far away as possible. There was no telling where it ended up, what with the state Crowley was in, but he hoped it was someplace horrible, it bloody well deserved it. He didn't know if his hands shook because of the hangover or because of everything else. 

The thing is, you never know how exactly the universe is going to kick you in the balls. Of all the things he'd braced himself to face in the last few days... He'd been ready to face the fury of Heaven and Hell together. The End of everything he lo... Oh, Manchester with it, he's a bloody angel now, he can love all he wants! So yeah, the End of everything he loved in case they failed. He'd been ready to face death holding his angel's hand. It's just nobody bothered to drop a memo warning him he'd have to face round pupils in his eyes and white feathers sticking out of his own back. They'd fought so hard for everything to stay the way it had been. If this was someone's idea of creative punishment, that someone had to be human since nobody in Heaven or Hell had a twisted mind like that. Probably a patron saint of dramatic irony or some such. Crowley wondered briefly if getting tortured by Hell for a few years would have been better. At least he'd have satisfaction of screaming until his throat hurt which was unrivalled in terms of stress relief. 

He paced through his apartment feeling like everything was falling apart around him. Aziraphale had been wrong when he'd said Crowley had nothing to lose. He'd had something. One last thing. Which was exactly what he'd lost. Well, not yet. He'd managed to run away rather gracefully before the angel had a chance to even say a word about their Arrangement. But he bloody well couldn't run away from it forever, he knew that. He just couldn't deal with it right now. One thing at a time, that's it. He didn't want to feel like Isaac Newton in an orchard of shit trees under heavy storm. 

The rest of Monday he spent draped over the sofa unmoving, nearly catatonic, staring at the carpet and determinedly ignoring Aziraphale's calls. There were exactly four to ignore that day and Crowley kept jumping every time he heard the phone ring from behind the door to his office, every bloody time. He wasn't hiding from Aziraphale, he told himself. Because that would be ridiculous. Hiding from what happened in his office though, that was something a sensible being would do of course. What was left of Ligur had to still be there and he wasn't in any hurry to see it. A puddle of dirty goo where a sentient existence had been... Crowley's stomach lurched. This was not guilt. This, this primal horror, the crawling sense of unease under his skin, it had nothing to do with being good, nothing to do with morality, that nausea breaking out somewhere between his lungs every time he thought about it. There had been thoughts, he imagined, the whole trains of them, that literally stopped in the middle, cut in half and then there was no one there anymore to pick them up... Crowley sat there hardly moving until Monday turned into Tuesday, bile rising in his throat every time a sharp ringing forced him to look at that wretched door.

Three hours into Tuesday he finally gave up and turned the TV on.

He felt violated. Owned. The Big Boss Up There made up the rules as He pleased and He didn’t bother informing anyone on what exactly those rules were. You made decisions blindly and the consequences were a bloody lottery at best.

He had to deal with something, at least one thing in this ridiculous carrousel of unsettling change. Just a little control over how it all went down, he needed it.

He flicked through channels with concentrated intent to contact Hell. News. More news. Bad news. Really bad news. Casablanca. Football. Old Doctor Who reruns. Huh. He wondered if it would work at all, now that he... well, yeah. But the system had been tuned to him, accustomed to his calls. It had to work. Crowley didn’t think he could bear even that tiny speck of control snatched away from him at the moment. And then it did work, and Liz Shaw turned to face him with uncharacteristic annoyance. _Oh, for someone’s sake, of all the..._

"YES?" Liz Shaw demanded in a tone that suggested she had better things to do than answer his calls.

Crowley sighed and steadied himself. He recreated the best image of his cool, suave self he could manage. Almost fooled himself.

"I'm done," he said levelly. 

Liz Shaw looked puzzled for a moment before coming back all the way to extremely irritated. 

"DONE WITH WHAT? YOUR REPORT? IT'S AUGUST, HOW CAN YOU BE DONE, PRAY TELL?"

Fair enough. Over the years both Heaven and Hell had settled on the human calendar. Every December was a bloody massacre of paperwork and unfortunate deadlines. August was not.

"Done with everything." Crowley clarified aiming for nonchalant and missing by a few third-world countries. "Done with Hell's work. As in, not doing it anymore." 

"CROWLEY," she said with exaggerated patience. "YOU ARE NOT DONE."

"No, I'm pretty sure I am." He felt sick. 

Liz Shaw looked tired. She heaved a sigh and recited with exasperation, as if she was an underpaid actress shooting a scene in a cheap commercial for the umpteenth time: "WE WILL COME AFTER YOU, CROWLEY."

It had to be Paymon, Crowley realized. No one else could threaten you with that much sulking complaint in their voice. He’d miss annoying that one.

He took a deep breath as silently as possible. Here goes nothing…

"Well, uh, good luck then," Crowley said, raking a hand through his hair. "Coming after an angel." 

Not that they couldn’t. Not end him, yes, that would be a scandal of enormous magnitude. Didn’t mean they couldn’t discorporate him after torturing his body six ways from Sunday. But maybe if he was lucky they would have too much on their plate to bother. He waited nervously. 

Liz Shaw blinked at him once, twice, and then it seemed to turn into a tic.

"AH." She said distractedly, her face contorting around eyelids that couldn’t stop moving. "I SEE."

Up. Down. Up. Down. You could slice awkward silence with a knife. Or perhaps with a chainsaw, it was quite solid. Finally, Paymon seemed to regain control over Liz Shaw’s eyelids and spoke. 

"SO YOU ARE ON EARTH."

"Yes." Crowley said hopelessly.

"YOUR COUNTERPART... THAT IS, YOUR FORMER COUNTERPART. PRINCIPALITY AZIRAPHALE. IS HE ALSO ON EARTH?"

Crowley's breath hitched. He gripped an armrest until his nails were digging under the expensive upholstery. _Oh shit._

"Why?" He asked weakly.

Miss Shaw rolled her eyes halfway to Gallifrey. "WHY INDEED, CROWLEY. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHY WE WANT TO KNOW IF HEAVEN DOUBLED ITS PRESENCE ON EARTH." Her gentle voice oozed sarcasm.

Crowley gripped the armrest even tighter, his eyes growing wide.

"Uh. Yeah. Right. Er. That, yes." He splattered incoherently. _Holy mother of dumb luck._ "He’s here. Yeah." Staring at the distorted picture he thought he could see Bessy there in the corner. _He hadn’t even thought about this. If not for…_

Liz Shaw folded her arms impatiently. "IS THAT IT? I DON’T GET PAID FOR EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION, YOU KNOW."

"Right." Crowley said distractedly. "Yeah, that’s it. Er. Ciao?"

And without so much as saying goodbye Liz Shaw turned back into her charming self, hurrying off into the building.

 

He spent another week wallowing in misery and unpleasantness of a thousand different what-might-have-beens. And ignoring Aziraphale’s calls of course, couldn’t forget to do that. They came like tidal waves, their number waxing and waning from day to day. By Sunday Aziraphale must’ve had enough because the calls never ceased for more than half an hour. He still couldn’t bring himself to answer. Not yet. He needed more time. Needed to feel normal, steady on his feet. By the time shadows grew short on Monday Crowley had his head under two pillows and a headache that simply wouldn’t leave. He kept miracling it away but it came back with vengeance every time his phone made a sound. In the evening the assault stopped and he slithered from under the pillows and sprawled on the bed face-down thinking about Zeboim of all places. That was when he heard the doorbell.

Crowley opened the door, expecting to see his angel, whose not-particularly-deep well of patience had finally run dry, and practically fell forward in shock. It was a demon. Adramelech stood at his doorstep with a coffee-to-go in his hand. Well, hopefully it was coffee. Could've as easily been virgin-blood-to-go in that paper cup. Panic overflowing his body, Crowley scrambled for something to say. Why the Hell did he come here? Why? 

"All Hail Satan!" He finally blurted out. 

And got a spray of hot cocoa in the face for his trouble. 

"Oh no." Adramelech stumbled backwards raising a ragged claw at him. "No, they didn't. Tell me you know why I'm here. Because I'm not delivering news like that. I didn't sign for this! Those bastards, they..." 

Crowley blinked fiercely until the realization of what he had just said hit him like a ton of eggs, a tiny big-mouthed embarrassment hatching from each of them.

"It was a joke," he lied, fidgeting apologetically. What else could he say? 'Sorry, dude, I only forgot I wasn't a demon anymore, so I half-arsed an attempt to say hello'? 

"You make another joke like that..." Adramelech started dangerously. 

Crowley interrupted him. "And you'll do what exactly? No, really, tell me, I'm all ears." He didn’t plan on getting passive-aggressive but old instincts died surprisingly hard. Someone started throwing threats at you and you threw heavier things back at them (just heavier threats if they were lucky), that's just how Hell worked, and his mouth kind of ran away with it. "Why don't you try to kill me and start a war with Heaven? How does that sound? Or even better, discorporate me before I have a chance to sign any forms, you know, while that corporation is still Hell's property!" 

 _Huh, not bad for an angel who'd just accidentally greeted someone with 'All hail Satan', is it?_ he thought to himself. 

"That is exactly why I'm here." Adramelech announced gravely and it was Crowley's turn to stumble backwards. 

"Er... What?" He didn't have any more Holy Water in here, didn't have anything. He eyed his hallway wildly trying to come up with something, but it was as desolate as the Earth on the first day of creation. 

"The forms." The demon explained and wiggled his eyebrows cheerfully. "How's it feel when the joke's on you, huh?" 

Crowley froze. 

"You bastard." 

"You literally just did the exact same thing not two minutes ago!" 

Crowley shrugged noncommittally. 

"I didn't imply I was going to kill you. How's that the same?" 

"You implied you didn't know. I mean, you and your psychotic reactions, who says you wouldn't drown me in Holy Water if I brought news like that?" 

"Excuse me?" Crowley aimed for indignant but ended up sounding vaguely sick. 

"Well, Hastur keeps telling strangest stories." 

Now Crowley definitely felt sick. He'd just stopped thinking about it, how's that fair? 

"Although some of the stories do sound outright weird, I'll give you that," Adramelech went on. "Especially with Ligur standing right next to him." 

Crowley gripped the doorframe. 

"Ligur's alive?" He whispered. 

Adramelech looked smug. "For a given value of alive, yes. See, I knew some things got rewritten. All sorts of demons walking around with two sets of memories, it had to mean something." 

Crowley didn't care who walked around with what. He held the doorframe and kept breathing. "Thank someone." He muttered somewhere between breaths. 

"Mmm, felt guilty, did you? That angel thing is a slippery slope, huh?" 

Crowley blinked. "That doesn't make an ounce of sense." He snapped, releasing the doorframe, and gestured for the demon to come inside. "How's that a slippery slope? It's an end of a slippery slope, the big finish, there's nowhere else to slip after that!" 

Adramelech shrugged wiping his feet on the doormat. "So, been on that slippery slope long enough?" 

 _You have no idea,_ Crowley thought, but pretended not to hear. 

The demon stepped into the livingroom and pulled out a folder from inside his trenchcoat. "Now, sixty-six signatures. First, the corporation. Since it has an angel inhabiting it, Hell considers it poisoned and damaged beyond repair, and renounces any claim over it. It becomes Heaven's property after they finish the paperwork and pay compensation, meanwhile, you sign for temporary ownership and all resulting responsibilities. The next one's about experience benefits and vacations." 

"Let me guess," Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose, right beneath his sunglasses. "I get to lose all the unused vacation days." 

"Don't be a bitch about it." Adramelech bristled. "You wouldn't if there _were_ any days left. You used them all up back in the nineteenth century, and then in the sixties." 

"That I did. Look, you might want to seat down, 'cause I'm reading these. I _invented_ fine print. You want tea?" 

The demon cringed and lifted his paper cup. "No, I'll stick to this. At least it's better than that dried leaf soup." 

"Uh-huh, you go say that somewhere public in this country and we'll see how fast you can get a new body." 

Adramelech made a face that seemed to convey his opinion on the quality of that particular joke. It was not a pleasant face. He kept reciting his long list of forms piling them up on the coffee table. Property accountability. Residual payments. No complaints with occupational safety department. Crowley couldn’t stifle a nervous laugh at that. _Occupational safety, my arse._ As he read through twisted syntax and illegible fonts with comic sans clawing at his eyes where he least expected it, it dawned on him that a few signatures were all that separated him from the abyss of change. He wondered lazily what would happen if he refused to sign. Nothing good, most likely. First of all, it would be embarrassing for everyone. He was no demon anyway, not anymore. It wasn't about official forms. His wings were white, eyes perfectly normal and when he'd stuck his finger in Holy Water the other day nothing had happened. It wouldn't do to cling to where you didn't belong anymore. 

He signed number fifty-two, his wrist cramping painfully. Experience benefits again. All gone not to return should he go back to his Fallen state. That’s just like them, isn’t it? Six thousand years and then you make a single mistake and that’s it, no one cares if you go right your wrongs after that (or wrong your rights, more likely), you still lose half your salary.

Sixty-four. Crowley tried and failed to concentrate. Land ownership. He sighed. That patch of land had been nice last time he’d seen it. No chance he could get anything equally good in Heaven, not now anyway, when everyone had been settled for millennia.

Adramelech interrupted his miserable train of thought. "Should’ve seen it coming, I thought." He smirked but there wasn’t much venom in it.

"What?"

"I said, should’ve seen it coming. You know, with a name like that."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Seriously, that again?" And he signed the last one irritably. Order of dismissal signed by Lucifer himself and the Court of Nobility.

There. That's it. All done and cemented in black ink. He collapsed back on the couch as soon as the demon left. 

 

 


	3. The Tower

Aziraphale knocked. Again. Crowley could pretend he wasn’t there all he liked, Aziraphale _knew_ him. Better than anyone could hope to. He could write a treatise on his moods. Crowley was home, either drinking or contemplating the carpet (if drinking hadn’t gone well at some point) or some combination of both. What he definitely was not contemplating was going out. It’s been three weeks. If Gabriel had decided it was time to drop the paperwork on him, she’d probably had to come bring it herself.

He knocked again, annoyed and more than a little fretful. With the way Crowley had taken the news, it wasn’t hard to imagine what would follow. Had Aziraphale Fallen, he knew with uncomfortable certainty he would definitely make it into Crowley’s fault. So fair’s fair, and The Holy One knows, Blessed be He, he’d tried to give Crowley space, he had! But three weeks? There was only so much time you could spend sulking before you made everything worse. They had business to discuss. By the end of the second week Aziraphale had been ready to apologize for whatever Crowley wanted to blame on him, if only Crowley picked up the bloody phone. He'd also made a mental list of Things That Must Not Be Mentioned. Half of it involved a spark of goodness.

“Crowley,” he called wearily and knocked again. “You are there.” Which wasn’t a question.

He heard a very loud sigh that had no trouble traveling all the way through the door, and a resigned, “Come in, angel.” The door opened but there was no one on the other side. Aziraphale made a point of rolling his eyes _very_ loudly. Ansaphones were one thing but not even answering _the door_ in person?

He carefully took off his shoes and made way towards the living room where Crowley was staring into a bowl of cherries not even turning to look at him. Well, it wasn't a bowl of cherries, not really. It didn't exactly take remarkable perceptiveness to see right through it. A bowl of cherry stems is what it was. That they happened to have cherries on them was mere coincidence. Aziraphale heaved a sigh as he invited himself to sit down on the sofa. 

Crowley's hand reached to his mouth and pulled out a perfectly straight cherry stem. 

"Can't do it." He concluded with hopeless finality. 

Aziraphale stared. 

"No you can." 

He took a cherry, put it into his own mouth and not five seconds later a neat bow emerged from his tongue. 

Crowley shook his head. 

"Not like that. Not with miracles. Used to do it the proper way." 

The angel didn't know what to say. White wings he could understand. Human eyes on Crowley's face seemed unsettling even to him. But this? Obsessing over cherry stems? Really _._  

"Do you want a drink?" Aziraphale asked uncertainly. 

Crowley didn't, no thank you, not after that blessed vodka. 

"Tea?" He suggested instead, and the angel nodded. 

Crowley moved his hand miracling two cups of Earl Grey into existence. Aziraphale took his. 

"Did you see Gabriel?" 

"I did." 

"And?" 

No answer. He waited patiently, sipping his tea for another minute, then called out softly: "Crowley?"

"Zophiel." Crowley corrected bitterly. 

"What?" 

"Zophiel. My new name... Well, no, it's my old name, but I haven't used it in a while." 

Aziraphale choked on his tea. 

"Dear old Gabriel refused to call me anything else." Crowley went on, oblivious. "Said it was unbecoming to renounce your God-given name." 

"Zophiel." Aziraphale repeated flatly. 

"Zophiel." Crowley agreed. 

"Really. Zophiel." 

"Yes." 

"This is the name God gave you." 

"Yep." 

Aziraphale blinked hard with the effort not to laugh. It would be incredibly rude. But seriously, Zophiel? 

"Spy of God." He decided to clarify. 

"Watchman." Crowley corrected, enjoying this despite himself. 

"You're perfectly aware they have the same meaning in that context. Seriously, though." 

"Uh-huh." 

Aziraphale was silent for some time. 

"How did you even manage to end up in Lucifer's coup with a name like that?" 

"Used to be everyone's favourite joke. They would start every meeting with 'Let's be careful, brothers and sisters, for there is a spy of God amongst us'. It was even funny, the first couple of times." 

Crowley smiled, sinking into the comfort of an old, overused joke, and Aziraphale cringed involuntarily. The way Heaven used to see them all, back in the times of The First War, as uncaring, blood-thirsty traitors with knives itching for unguarded backs... Inane, borderline-offensive jokes were not exactly part of that mental image. 

They remained silent for another few minutes as their tea grew cold. Crowley was harassing an unfortunate cherry stem.Then Aziraphale spoke, fumbling with his cufflinks nervously. 

"Did she mention your new assignment?" 

"I'm staying." Crowley blurted out and knocked back his cold Earl Grey. He missed Aziraphale's shuddering breath of relief, and the angel didn't comment but watched Crowley's face tensely. It didn't look happy. "Because, er, for some reason Hell prematurely decided that Heaven had placed two agents on Earth. So they also sent two. And now Heaven has to send two agents for real." 

"For some reason?" Aziraphale repeated carefully. He felt something inside him that was supposed to uncoil and let out a contented sigh coil even tighter instead, and he couldn’t even tell why. Crowley had taken care of that. Right. That was good. It meant that however stubborn he was, however determined to wallow in misery, he hadn’t really given up. Not that Crowley was in habit of giving up, mind you, but the way things were going, too fast and too confusing, Aziraphale honestly hadn’t known what to think. Wasn’t Crowley supposed to be going on about just how clever he was, making Heavenly higher-ups dance to his tune like that, and how the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord had made?  Well, no, probably not about that last one, Aziraphale thought uncomfortably as he eyed the cherries. And yet. _For some reason_? What was that supposed to mean? Crowley made it sound almost as if…

"It was an accident.” Crowley said, still refusing to look at him. “Mostly." 

Aziraphale closed his eyes and counted to twelve in Enochian. Well, that was it. Maybe he _had_ given up. "Sounds like a good accident," he muttered managing a strained smile. What else was he supposed to say? ‘ _You know, my dear, acedia used to be a deadly sin, so would you please snap out of it’_? He was trying to be _polite_ about it all.

"Well, yeah, I've never been a stranger to dumb luck." Crowley stared into his empty cup. "Anyway, now I get to stay. And besides, as our dearest boss pointed out, there isn't much else I could do with a name like that." 

To hear Crowley speak so listlessly was unnerving. To hear Crowley speak so listlessly about staying on Earth was outright eldritch.

Aziraphale should have come here days ago, by the looks of it. Or maybe he shouldn’t have come at all, he truly couldn’t say. He’d been feeling out of his element ever since that Sunday evening when he’d seen Crowley’s face, ashen and mournful and put-upon, a face that very expressively said “give me a single happy smile about this and I’ll smite you six ways from this mad Sunday”. And he’d tried, hadn’t he? He’d tried to be considerate. He had decided, even before the whole mishap, somewhere between Saturday night and Sunday morning, when fitful agitation packed its things and vacated the premises but relief failed to arrive just yet, so tugging guilt decided to stay the night, that Crowley had had enough of his self-righteous holier-than-thou remarks. Aziraphale’s mind kept coming back to that conversation they’d had on their way through Tadfield, he couldn’t put it out of his head but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to apologize either. Somehow it never seemed like the right moment. And so, on and on it went in his head, like a broken record. Not that he was complaining. At least it kept him from saying anything equally thoughtless and hurtful again.

It was one thing to let Crowley frown and grumble at his own Redemption like it was worse than the world going up in flames. Because maybe it was, for him, right now. But this was different. This was not about Aziraphale’s beliefs, or Heavenly propaganda, _or common sense, honestly, wasn’t it obvious being brought back from damnation was meant to be a good thing (although he wasn’t going to say that out loud, thank you very much)_. This was about Crowley, and _who_ he was, not _what_ he was. He loved Earth. It was his home. Whatever had made him so indifferent, Aziraphale didn’t think he could simply let it slide.

“Aren’t you even the tiniest bit happy with the way everything turned out?” He asked awkwardly, carefully.

Crowley snorted mirthlessly. “That’s the problem, angel. I’m supposed to, yes? Because Big Boss Up There decided I should be an angel from now on, and while He was at it, He also decided how I should feel about it, and isn’t this just great?” He threw his head back in frustration while Aziraphale, very intently, was trying not to say a thing. “It’s just like last time. I sidestep a little and the next thing I know I’m something I never wanted to be and everyone around seems to know exactly what I should think about it.”

“Well, not entirely like last time,” Aziraphale said in a strangled voice. Trying to be tactful, as he was finding out, was quite an exercise. Especially after six thousand years of, well, _not_ trying it. “There is less uncertainty?” He offered weakly, feeling sweat gather on his forehead with the effort.

Crowley shrugged. “Not like there’s something Hell did that your side… err… our side wouldn’t.”

And now Aziraphale was being introduced to a difference between running a sprint and running a marathon. For one thing, his strained attempts at tactful, civil conversation that carefully avoided precarious ground, were not very well trained to run long distance.

"They tortured you." Aziraphale muttered under his breath. 

“Wossit?”

“They tortured you!” He repeated more fiercely, breath catching in his throat.

Crowley waved his hand dismissively. "Nah. They just threatened to. Never actually got to it, what with all the sauntering vaguely upwards business." 

"Not that time." The angel said darkly. "Before." 

"Ah." Crowley had sort of hoped all those times when he vanished suddenly for a month and then came back with his voice hoarse and his hands shaking would pass unnoticed. "Well I could always escape."

"That's not the point." 

"No, it isn't." Crowley had to agree. "But it's still amusing how you could escape, run home to contact them and 'call fains', and they would have to grudgingly tell you to go back to work even if they've planned out a century of uninterrupted agony for you."

"Why?" Aziraphale asked numbly not even sure if he cared. _Amusing_ , he thought, _amusing!_

"It was kind of like law, angel. If you're cunning enough to escape then you probably deserve to." 

"It's a mockery of Justice." Aziraphale said automatically. 

"Well, duh! It's Hell. Everything's a mockery of something." 

Aziraphale shook his head. "This is wrong." 

Crowley looked hurt. "What did I have to do then? Continue suffering for the sake of Justice?" 

"No, no, not this. But the way you speak about it, almost... fondly? _That_ is wrong. Really, my dear, how can you find it endearing when they went and did that to you whenever they decided your work was not up to their twisted standards?" Talking proved increasingly difficult, partly because he remembered every single time. Crowley was a terrible liar. He knew when his "business trips" were not business trips. Or rather, when they were too literally "business trips", as in, Hell-related, Hell-bound and horrible in nature. They were restless weeks filled with Aziraphale's failed attempts to distract himself. And then Crowley would be back, hurt and exhausted, trying to hide it so bloody artlessly. It broke something inside Aziraphale, every time, just a little bit. 

"It's Hell, angel. That's practically their job description. Besides, I escaped a lot." 

He'd escaped twice. Which was enough to be smug about it. 

Aziraphale shook his head again. "It's still awful. Look, Crowley, Heaven doesn't do that, it doesn't..." 

"And Hell didn’t tell me what to call myself, how about that?" Crowley snapped, rising abruptly from the sofa. "They shrugged, they handed out the paperwork, they never called me anything but Crowley ever since that last form was stamped and filed away, and they never cared! And here?" His face twisted into an exaggeratedly grumpy expression and he mimicked with a generous share of venom: " _unbecoming to renounce your God-given name_ , my arse!" He took a deep breath and sat back, arms crossed.

The thing that worried Aziraphale most at the moment was just how much of that sullen annoyance of Gabriel’s Crowley managed to plaster on his face and pour into his voice. The thought came to him abruptly that these two would come to a very efficient understanding sooner rather than later and, worse than that, they would probably eventually _like each other._ They could be patron saints of sulky teenagers together. _Yeach._

And this conversation was going _nowhere_. They were talking themselves in circles. Aziraphale sighed and decided to change the subject. There were enough things they still had to discuss. Some of them seemed both safe enough and urgent enough.

“About The Arrangement,” he started.

Crowley exhaled sharply, put his face in both hands and shook his head violently. “No. No! Angel, for Someone’s sake, not now!” His face emerged from under his fingers looking outright _betrayed_. “Just give me some time, okay? Please?”

Aziraphale nodded silently, taken aback. _Now that went well._

For almost three minutes nobody said a word. Crowley was busy trying to get his breathing under control. And eating the cherries. He’d given up on the stems altogether, detaching them stolidly and piling them up on his saucer. As for Aziraphale, he really didn’t think there existed a word in all Creation that he could deem safe right now. He briefly considered reaching for Crowley’s hand but decided against it. Maybe he could say “banana”? Probably not, it was too close to apples, and rainbow-shaped. Crowley definitely had a problem with rainbows. And maybe a problem with apples. It certainly wasn’t any more far-fetched than Crowley suddenly having a problem with The Arrangement. He wondered if this was how insanity began. You started thinking about rainbow-shaped, apple-related bananas and then it was all downhill from there. ‘Scarf’ was serpent-shaped, ‘Sussex’ had way too many s’s, all the colours were out by definition, ‘premeditation’ was something this mishap lacked and it upset Crowley so… He remembered something then. A fragment of conversation. That conversation, yes. Something innocuous enough that he hadn’t noticed it in all the time it had been stuck in his head.

_‘I expect people round here like living here and you’re just picking it up.’_

_‘Never picked up anything like this in London.’_

_‘There you are, then. Proves my point.’_

Maybe he was just tired of London. Understandable, really. Crowley did look like he could use a little quiet. Some beautiful nature. Somewhere less familiar.

Aziraphale smiled tentatively. “What do you think about New Zealand?”

It was a miracle he was still willing to speak to anyone after that.

Crowley went white in the face. Not just pale, but properly white. He stopped breathing, and his glasses slid a little down his nose.

“New Zealand,” he muttered tonelessly. “Yeah.” And then he shot up from the sofa knocking down the coffee table in the process. “I just. Uh. I have to go,” he stammered looking at his wrist where a watch should have been (but wasn’t). He moved around in ragged leaps full of frantic hostility as he picked up his blazer and car keys.

“Go where?” Aziraphaled managed, stunned.

Crowley froze. “ _Not_ New Zealand,” he choked out desperately. “Er. Out. Just, you know, out. To do stuff. Things. Urgent.”

 

And he bolted, through the door and down, down the stairs, determinedly not looking back like it could turn him into a pillar of salt (and maybe it could, who knew the rules anymore). _New Zealand._ Well, that checks out. Right on the other side of the planet. Sensible! His throat constricted painfully. Crowley was vaguely aware he was fleeing from his own flat. _Smooth as fuck_. He’d have to sort that out. He’d call Aziraphale later. Tomorrow maybe. Or next week. He hadn’t even lied. He needed to get out. Just… somewhere that was not here. _New fucking Zealand, for Someone’s sake, Aziraphale, what is wrong with you?!_


End file.
